The world may never know if Queen Elizabeth II reciprocated the warm feelings and admiration Donald Trump had for her, but the former president is convinced that he got to know the late monarch well enough during his 2019 state visit to have an opinion on the relationship she had with Meghan Markle, her grandson’s American wife.
“I didn’t like the way she dealt with the queen,” Trump said about the Duchess of Sussex in an interview Wednesday morning with syndicated radio host Hugh Hewitt, the Daily Mail reported. “I became very friendly with the Queen. She was an incredible woman.”
Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, pose with their newborn son Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor during a photocall in St George’s Hall at Windsor Castle on May 8, 2019 in Windsor, England. The Duchess of Sussex gave birth at 05:26 on Monday 06 May, 2019. (Photo by Dominic Lipinski – WPA Pool/Getty Images)
In making these remarks about Prince Harry’s wife, Trump, who is running again for president in 2024, also said he’d love to go up against her in a political debate, after he said he was skipping the second Republican presidential debate, as he skipped the first.
“Let’s set it up. Let’s go do something. I’d love to debate her. I would love it,” Trump said to Hewitt about the former TV actor who has often been said to harbor her own political ambitions.
The 45th president then mentioned Meghan’s relationship with the queen, suggesting that he believed, like some friends of the late queen, that she and Harry were “cruel” to the monarch in the final years of her life with their repeated criticisms of the royal family and allegations that someone in the family had said something about their son that was perceived as racist.
“I think it’s not a good situation going on with the two of them,” Trump said about Meghan and the queen, who died a year ago. The former reality TV star then appeared to ramble on about the feud that developed between him and Meghan, which came to a head just before he met with the queen at Buckingham Palace in June 2019.
In a 2019 interview with the U.K. tabloid The Sun before his state visit, Trump called Meghan’s past comments about him “nasty.” During the 2016 election campaign — before Meghan met Harry and when she was only known as the co-star of the TV show “Suits” — she called Trump “misogynistic” and “divisive” in a TV interview. Meghan also said she might move to Canada if Trump were elected president.
Suggesting that he had been unaware of the duchess’s 2016 remarks ahead of preparations for visit to Britain, Trump said in the interview: “I didn’t know that she was nasty.”
Trump previously used the word to describe Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent, during a 2016 presidential debate. After he called Clinton a “nasty woman,” the phrase became a rallying cry for the anti-Trump movement.
In his new interview with Hewitt, Trump appeared to refer to Meghan and Harry when he said, “I didn’t know that they don’t like me. Somebody mentioned it might be possible. They wouldn’t be the only ones.”
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When Trump visited the U.K. in 2019, Meghan and Harry were still working members of the royal family. During the visit, Trump, his wife Melania, and daughter, Ivanka Trump, enjoyed lunch with the queen and other royal family members, including Harry, at Buckingham Palace.
That evening, the queen hosted Trump, his wife and his four adult children at a state dinner. Harry skipped the dinner, and so did his wife. At the time, Meghan had a good excuse for not socializing with the Trumps at a state dinner. She had just given birth to Archie, her oldest child with Harry.
In his comments to The Sun in 2019, Trump decided to not belabor his displeasure with Meghan for expressing her opposition to his presidency. In an apparent gesture of reconciliation, he said that the Los Angeles-born duchess seemed to be a “nice” addition to the royal family.
“I am sure she will do excellently,” he said. “I hope she does (succeed).”
It turned out that Trump was wrong about how Meghan would fare in the royal establishment. As she and Harry have repeatedly explained in interviews and in their 2022 Netflix docuseries, she was miserable. So was her husband. The couple left the U.K. for good in 2020 and resettled in California.
